In the art of dispensing, articles have been developed which are coated or impregnated with useful substances intended to be utilized when the article is contacted with a target surface. While there are advantages with having the substance present on or near the surface of such articles, there is often the drawback that the useful substance is unprotected and is subject to inadvertent contact before intended use. Inadvertent contact may lead to contamination of the substance, loss of the substance onto surfaces other than the desired target surface, and/or contamination of such other surfaces with the substance. Moreover, the use of such articles to manually apply a substance to a surface of an object frequently results in exposure of a user's hands to the substance. At the very least such a scenario results in a waste of product and is undesirable from an aesthetic standpoint and, at worst, results in excessive exposure of the user to potentially harmful, toxic, or otherwise undesirable substances.
More recently, sheet materials have been developed which utilize a threedimensional structure which is activatible by a user to deliver a substance onto a target surface. While such sheet materials are believed to provide many advantages in relation to other types of delivery systems, the usefulness of non-structured sheets of material for certain applications is limited by the need of the user to grasp and control the sheet material during the process of applying the substance to the target surface. Depending upon the nature of the target surface and the substance to be applied, difficulties in controlling a generic sheet of material can lead to messiness and/or waste of the substance.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an applicator for applying a substance to a target surface which permits greater control by the user during the application process.
It would also be desirable to provide such an applicator which permits the user to apply a substance to a target surface with reduced messiness and waste of the substance.